On the road...

…with my man John.

Today the Road To One America tour started with John Edwards' appearance at a Good Morning America town hall event in New Orleans. ABC news has good coverage here. A sample...

During the meeting, Edwards was asked to share one solution to eliminating poverty.

"If I had to pick just one, it would be to make work pay," Edwards said..

Three ways to do that, Edwards said, is to raise the national minimum wage, increase the earned income tax credit and allow workers to organize unions and collectively bargain for better wages.

From there, the tour took John and Elizabeth Edwards from New Orleans to Canton, Mississippi, where they met with poultry workers and where Senator Edwards continued to pursue the theme of making work pay.

"No one who works full-time should live in poverty. By honoring and rewarding work, we will lift up millions of Americans and build a stronger, more productive America."

In a country that preaches the importance of a strong work ethic, hard working folks in places like Canton live a very different reality...

A Labor Department study of the poultry industry nationally found that out of 51 plants surveyed, 100 percent had not paid employees for all hours worked and one-third took illegal deductions from pay.

My man John, of course, has a plan.

Other stops on the tour today...

Marks, Mississippi is in Quitman County, where one out of every three residents is in poverty. In 1968, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. started his Poor People's March at the Road Side Park in Marks, which would eventually bring over 7,000 Americans to Washington, DC. Today, the Quitman County Development Organization is a local community center creating economic opportunity with many of the solutions John Edwards has proposed nationally, including affordable housing and a credit union offering low-fee banking, small business loans, and alternatives to payday loans to help working families save and get ahead.

West Helena, Arkansas has seen women in the area—like millions of women nationally—increasingly working in underpaid home care jobs. Home health aide is America's fastest-growing profession. Ninety percent of home care workers are women, and one out of every four is a single mother caring for young children. The undervaluing of this career contributes to the reality that of the 37 million Americans living in poverty, 21 million are women. In Arkansas, the typical hourly wage for home health aides is $8.13, and nationally 25 percent lack health benefits. Half of all home care workers are living in a low-income family, and they are disproportionately rural.

Memphis, Tennessee is where Dr. King went on a detour from the Poor People's March to stand with Memphis sanitation workers' striking for fair wages. His campaign for justice came to a tragic end during that detour in April 1968. The Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association was founded that same year, and has worked to bring together residents from all walks of life to lift Memphis families out of poverty. The Association is in the racially and economically segregated Peabody-Vance neighborhood of Memphis, which has a 60 percent poverty rate and a 15 percent unemployment rate. MIFA's programs include teen job services, college prep, services to the elderly, legal counseling and debt management.